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4.54 pm
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore): I am pleased to contribute to a debate that has contained some thoughtful and intelligent contributions from all parts of the House. Earlier, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned that flexibility was now the key word. I agree, and contend that responsiveness is also vital. Other hon. Members have spoken about NATO and other organisations, but I want to comment briefly on the role of the UN. I am not one of the detractors who say that the United Nations is broken and cannot be fixed. The UN is bruised and its often quoted unique legitimacy needs to be restrengthened.
In a debate such as this, there is a temptation to reflect solely on the incidents in our immediate history—those that are still ongoing in Iraq. I want to broaden the discussion. The United Nations is a unique institution. What it decides to do and the responsiveness and flexibility of its decisions and actions have an immediacy of impact on the role of NATO, European reaction forces and United Kingdom troops.
I welcome the work that the Defence Committee has done on the strategic defence review and the new chapter, in particular the focus on terrorism. That work echoes a new realisation within the UN. I think that Kofi Annan has seen that, despite his opposition to what happened in Iraq. He recognised that there is a case to be made for intervention on humanitarian or conflict resolution grounds within states and over sovereign territorial borders. That is the world in which we now live.
The UN can no longer take some effective action but, as on so many occasions, merely pass resolution after resolution hoping that something will come of it. It must make its work meaningful and be serious about acting upon it. That does not mean that military intervention or peacekeeping troops on the ground will be necessary in every instance.
Like many other hon. Members and international observers, I would welcome a change in understanding in the UN. When resolutions are passed they must be
taken seriously and they must be acted upon more speedily and with more flexibility where appropriate.I am not one of those who knock the UN. It has played a massive role ever since its inception. Since 1996, there have been 42 peacekeeping and observer missions worldwide. At present, 16 peacekeeping operations are under way. The UN has negotiated 172 peaceful settlements to various regional conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq war, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and in El Salvador. So, quiet diplomacy also has its role, but backed up by a serious intent and the use of military intervention where necessary.
Humanitarian aid should not be overlooked. More than 30 million refugees in flight from war, famine or persecution have received aid through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since 1951. At present, more than 19 million refugees—mostly women and children—are receiving food, shelter, medical aid and sustenance through the UN.
There is a critique of the United Nations, however. It has failed at moments of supreme crisis to act on the decisions that it has already taken. It has proved insufficient to the challenges that it has faced. Despite the high standards associated with the UN, in the hundreds of wars since 1945 it has authorised use of force only twice: the Korean war in 1950 and the Gulf war in 1991. That amounts to only two occasions in its entire history. That poor record of conflict prevention and resolution and enforcement action is a reflection on the UN. It colours perception of the UN throughout the world, including in present conflict situations, where any discussion of UN action is looked at askance, or with a smile or rebuke. Those of us who seriously believe in the role of the UN have to change that.
I will deal with how we can move to that situation, but if we make the UN more responsive and flexible in its approach, that will have an implication for United Kingdom capabilities as well as European and international capabilities and the demands on them.
Mr. Breed: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one reason that there are so few UN-authorised actions is the regular imposition of the veto by certain countries? Is he suggesting that that should be reformed?
Huw Irranca-Davies: The hon. Gentleman brings me to that point a little earlier than I had intended. Yes, there should be a review of the use of the veto. That is reflected not only in what has happened in the recent past but also much further back. Indiscriminate use of the veto can lead not only to lethargy but to inertia in decision making while in some areas of the world people are losing their lives.
Iraq has already been mentioned. We could also consider Afghanistan. In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the UN neither backed nor prevented the war and, in retrospect, changed its mind. In Rwanda in 1994, there was a failure to act while genocide was going on. There is a lack of intervention in current situations, for example, in the Congo, the great lakes region or Liberia—a country that turned, inevitably, to the US. The UN fails to enforce many of its resolutions and to act in moments of crisis.
As I said, troop commitments are not required in every case, but the inertia is striking. When people are losing their lives and major human rights abuses are
taking place, the UN needs to put across the message that it can be more proactive and dynamic when appropriate. The message should resound across the international community that the UN is serious about stepping in when that is needed.The use of the veto is often not governed by considerations driven by the international fraternity, or sorority, but by national interests, such as energy. That has happened not only in the immediate past. A range of countries has been guilty of indiscriminate use of the veto, or of threatening its indiscriminate use. The US is often mentioned, although it is not the only one, but we can certainly cite it in terms of the Cuban blockade and its belated refusal to condemn Halabja. We can cite Russia in relation to Afghanistan and Kosovo, and so on.
Current processes in NATO and the composition of the Security Council favour certain countries. They also favour countries that can deploy certain resources; in effect, the NATO countries. Should that be so? In a new century, should it be primarily the post-1945 make-up of the Security Council that determines how the UN makes its decisions?The composition of the Security Council and its decision making alienate much of the developing world. That is unfair and it needs reform. It damages the whole concept of multilateralism.
I began my contribution by developing the theme of what the UN has actually achieved. Those achievements are significant, but because the UN has failed to act in moments of supreme crisis it now appears to some people—although I am not one of them—as merely a talking shop. Its decision making is flawed. It is seen, at best, as a creature of the permanent members, with misuse, or threatened misuse, of the veto.
If the use of the veto is to be reviewed and reformed, that use should be delicate. It should be used to cut through problems as a surgeon uses delicate instruments in an operation. It should not be used as a sledgehammer or a chainsaw, as has so often been the case.
The developing world deeply distrusts the UN as a peacekeeper. How can we achieve reform? As the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) and other hon. Members have pointed out, if we want the UN to have a better speed of response and to be willing to act where appropriate—which is essential—that will have an effect on troop capabilities and demands on different nations. The decision-making process needs streamlining and the institutions restructuring to some extent.
One suggestion—I do not say that it is the only way forward—is that seats should be found on the Security Council for regional or sub-continental areas, which would have an implication for our representation as well. Another suggestion is to reform the veto and consider majority voting. Greater transparency is essential. Non-permanent members are regularly excluded from the real negotiations. For example, in the run-up to adopting resolution 1441, non-permanent members of the Security Council had to consult the New York Times to see the draft resolutions. So information needs to be passed to all the nations represented at the UN.
I began by mentioning Kofi Annan. In an interview in the Financial Times earlier this year, he was quoted as saying:
- "If the challenges we now face have changed, the responses must also change. We must be able to adapt our institutions and structures to deal with that. I'm not sure that the organs of the organisations are working in an optimum fashion."
In conclusion, I ask a simple and straightforward question to the Secretary of State, as we consider a review of how we deploy and assess the current and future capabilities of UK forces, as well as our interaction with European partners and multilateral partners worldwide: what impact would a reformed, more proactive, more flexible UN have on those capabilities?
5.6 pm
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): I do not want to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) down the road of UN reform; I want to focus rather more directly on British defence policy itself. First, I want to commend to the House the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson). I should have liked to make such a speech, and I commend its details to the Minister. He will know, as I do, with what authority my hon. Friend speaks on these matters, and he had some proper and extremely wise advice for the Government on the detail of the application of defence policy, particularly the complementary use of heavy and light capability, as the Secretary of State referred to it.
There is, however, one detail on which I should like to depart from what my hon. Friend said. In fact, it is not really a detail; it is a rather central point in his analysis of what has happened to British defence policy. I disagree with him that the events of 11 September were a fundamental turning point for the United Kingdom. They were a fundamental turning point for the United States, and that has had significant consequences for the United Kingdom, but the reshaping of British defence policy in 1990–91, at the end of the cold war, was the most significant event for us.
Obviously, through the 1990s, when I was a special adviser in the Ministry of Defence, there was a certain amount of settling down in that process and the adding back of a certain number of infantry battalions when it became clear that the cuts at the end of the cold war had gone too far. Then we had the SDR when this Government came to power in 1997, which very largely confirmed the overall direction that defence policy had taken since Tom King's reforms.
Those reforms have stood the test of time in a strategic sense, although not in a tactical sense, where changes have had to be made. The then Government were beginning to address the whole issue of asymmetric threats as part of the policy of being able to deploy forces overseas and having an expeditionary force capability, which was being built up during the 1990s.
The Defence Committee stated in its report on the 1998 SDR that the Government had not paid enough attention to issues such as homeland security and asymmetric threats. Plainly, the Government's reaction in the form of the new chapter of the SDR shows that they have started to make progress in relation to the
lessons of the events of 11 September. A wholesale change in British defence policy, however, will not be seen. Our policy was established to enable us to have an expeditionary force capability to intervene around the world to have some influence on those areas of the world from where these threats are emerging. The problem for British defence policy is that the Government accepted the framework that they inherited in 1997 and promptly took £500 million out of the budget in the first year. They have now started to add back a small real growth in the defence budget.Sitting watching British defence policy and the shape that the armed forces will have to take under those budgetary constraints, however, is like watching a slow-motion train crash. Any serious observer of defence who listened carefully to the Secretary of State's speeches—I am something of an aficionado of such speeches, having had something to do with them previously, and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) will be the same—will have heard between the lines a Secretary of State preparing to administer very serious cuts inside the Ministry of Defence. That is simply because, on the existing budget, it will not be possible to obtain armed forces fully recruited at the establishment at which the Government now say that they aim, combined with providing two aircraft carriers with their aircraft and the full purchase of Typhoon. The equipment programme rolling forward is far too heavily loaded to be sustained by the funds that the House is currently voting and intends to vote for defence under the Government's comprehensive spending review plans.
We can hear the words of the Secretary of State indicating that cuts will come. We have heard the rumours of cuts in Scottish infantry battalions. I went through all that in 1992–93 with the debate about the end of the Gordon Highlanders, with all the pain that that caused before the Highlanders were formed, and we can hear that debate happening again. We can hear in the words of the Secretary of State, if we listen carefully, the defence pips beginning to squeak.
In my brief remarks, I want to warn the non-experts and the people outside the defence establishment—I suspect that the defence establishment knows perfectly well what will happen—that we are about to have another series of defence crises, as the Government, as usual, try to get a quart out of a pint pot. The timing for the Ministry of Defence, of course, is absolutely lousy. As it needs more money, the Government are running out of it. The fiscal position of the Government is heading south in a tearing hurry—we have already heard about the Chief Secretary sending notes round to spending Departments making it clear that the good days are over and that they cannot expect large increases in their budgets. In terms of the Government's fiscal position, the next two or three years look as if they will be extremely tight, which is usually extremely bad news for the Ministry of Defence.
In the end, it will come down to the Prime Minister. He has deployed the armed forces overseas on numerous occasions and has set the tone that the Government have taken in deploying British troops around the world to Sierra Leone, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—admittedly only a small force, thank goodness, due to the insistence of the chiefs of staff on avoiding getting anything more than a fingernail into that
particular mangle—and to the Balkans and Iraq, which look like endless commitments. In the debate during the next year or so about public expenditure, the Prime Minister must give the Ministry of Defence the funds to sustain the operational capability of the armed forces at the establishment and with the forward equipment programmes that the Government are currently planning. If they do not, we will probably yet again face a round of salami slicing. The danger is that that will happen on the back of all the pressure that has been placed on all the men and women of the armed services. For a long while, they have been able to sustain enormous operational pressure, but that cannot go on for very much longer.The Chief of the Defence Staff and the other Chiefs of Staff are warning about the degrading of training because of the huge commitment to operations. The armed forces need time and money to recover their capability. If they do not receive that, an institution of which the United Kingdom can properly be enormously proud will waste away under the twin fiscal and operational pressures to which the Government are subjecting them.
I hope that the Secretary of State's words were part of his negotiating position with the Treasury and the Prime Minister. I hope that the Secretary of State and his Department can rely on the Prime Minister's support in the negotiations on expenditure that will take place over the next few months.
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